Designed for reading

2 years ago

I redesigned my blog with a single goal in mind, to make it a nice reading experience.

After falling in love with how Medium read on my tablet (and because they have some good content), I was motivated to not only start writing again but to make it more accessible and enjoyable. I’m not going to lie that my tablet is now my primary reading device. A used book from the store here and there, sure, but for the most part I just read it digitally. It’s more convenient for me and has less of a chance to get eaten by the dog.

Once I was turned on to Medium, I started reading it at night before bed and that’s become a routine thing now. It’s become a regular magazine of sorts and while my content and network isn’t on par with Medium, I wanted to channel that feeling into my own site. So far I think it’s succeeding but it wasn’t easy to stop at simple.

Easy on the eyes

My blog designs of the past served several purposes of which the act of reading was rarely considered. I used it to flex my design muscle and promote every other web project I was working on. No more. My writing is now about your reading.

If you haven’t tried reading Morning Toast on your tablet yet – or even phone – give it a try and let me know what you think. I’m confident you’ll find it easy to read in nearly any mode. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old…or maybe it’s because I spend 10 hours a day staring at a computer screen…but reading tiny text is now more inconvenient than ever. If I end up on a site that has small text and is otherwise heavy on every but words, I’ll probably give up and leave. I bumped up the font size here as well as tried to find a typeface that was easy to read.

Your experience matters

One really nice bi-product of the hundreds of devices now being online is the shift in focusing on the experience of reading, using, touching, doing. Phones and tablets fill gaps in your time so whatever you want to see needs to fill that gap quickly. That means easy to read, easy to use and just all around not making you think too hard.

The hard part now is to not fall into old habits and whore up sites with crap you really aren’t interested in.